Wednesday, October 9 2013

In the 1890s Francis Marion Steele began photographing cowboys, recording the work and play of these iconic figures on the open ranges of southwest Kansas, southeast Colorado, northeast New Mexico, and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma.

This genre-crossing exhibit juxtaposes Steele’s photographs with passages from True Grit to help visitors envision the world in which heroine Mattie Ross and her companions Rooster Cogburn and Texas Ranger LaBoeuf had their adventures.

Before and during the Civil War, Confederate guerrillas – men like William Clarke Quantrill, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, and Frank and Jesse James – battled federal troops and Jayhawker irregulars along the Missouri-Kansas border.

That brutal era comes to life in Guerrillas in Our Midst, an original exhibit of drawings and photographs from the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections. It covers not only the war but also its aftermath, when former bushwhackers like the James brothers turned to outlawry.

Begun in 1942 to address labor needs in agriculture and the railroads, the U.S. government’s bracero program became the largest guest worker program in U.S. history, with hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers providing manpower from World War II through 1964.

Bittersweet Harvest, a new bilingual exhibition organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, examines the experiences of Bracero workers and their families, providing rich insight into Mexican-American life and historical background to today’s debates on immigration and guest worker programs.

Hixon transformed the field of portrait photography in Kansas City and the surrounding region during a career that spanned more than seven decades. His studios—the first in the Brady Building at 11th and Main Streets, and the second just one block west in the Baltimore Hotel—welcomed thousands of patrons throughout the 1910s and 1920s.

Former Kansas City Royal Willie Wilson retired from Major League Baseball with 668 stolen bases (ranking 12th all-time) and 13 inside-the-park home runs (the most of any major leaguer playing after 1950). He was also among the first active major league players to serve jail time, having pled guilty to misdemeanor drug charges in 1983.

Now Wilson and his co-author, former Kansas City Star sportswriter Kent Pulliam, discuss his life and career as chronicled in a new memoir.

Between 1942 and 1964, as many as 300,000 Mexican laborers—called braceros—were employed as farmhands or railroad workers in the United States. The Bracero Program eventually became the largest guest worker program in U.S. history.

Veterans of the Bracero Program now living in the Kansas City area discuss their experiences in this panel conversation moderated by Christopher Leitch.

The presentation complements Bittersweet Harvest, a bilingual exhibit about the Bracero Program on display through October 27, 2013, at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.

Calling all teens who enjoy reading
and have a flair for the dramatic!Out Loud is a program where teens can hang out, share dramatic readings from popular Young Adult books and scripts, and learn about acting and storytelling under the guidance of theatre professional and librarian Meghann Henry and Central Youth Services librarian Clare Hollander.